USA – HI, Great Pacific Garbage Patch Spoils Hawaii Island Beach

Kamilo Beach, located at the Big Island of Hawai’i is an early victim of what’s known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a swirling mass of plastic garbage spanning several hundred thousand square miles between Hawaii and main coast of the US.

Sandy beaches, blue-sky waters, and palm tree-lined shores are some of the things that probably come to mind when you think of Hawaii. However, on the Southernmost part of Hawaii Island, Kamilo beach is different. Currents from around the Pacific deposit trash in the gyre, which spins rubbish out onto Hawaii’s Kamilo Beach daily. Plastic particles mar what used to be pristine shores, and now much of the beach is made up of garbage from the ocean.

Although community groups had just finished cleaning up the beach when GNI reporters arrived, the sand was still littered with marine debris. At this point in time, this is as good as it gets.

Megan Lamson is the project coordinator for the Hawaii wildlife fund, a non profit organisation that has been actively working on conservation issues since 2005. She said: “Since 2003, the Hawaii wildlife fund pulled off 100 metric tons, actually excuse me 290.000 lbs over the last 8 years off this stretch of coastline. The vast majority of which comes from the ocean and it’s far away from places like California and Washington state, Oregan, Japan, Taiwan, Korea.”

GrassRoots News will continue to cover this story as this community struggles to keep up with the world’s trash that’s floating into this once beautiful beach with every tide.

5 Comments Already

Great to see this piece finally get out there – more GNI stories to come soon about the impact the Japanese tsunami debris is starting to have on this massive international problem that is affecting much more than the shores of Hawaii.

Just found out this weekend that this story is going international – CCTV in Korea is picking it up for re-broadcast. Any other news outlets that are interested, in this or the part 2 piece about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and the Japan Tsunami debris’ impact with interviews by Dr. Maximenko of Univ. of Hawaii at Manoa go to “contact us” on this site (under “about us” tab).

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